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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

Almost Human … Almost Vancouver

A futuristic version of our city plays a big role in the new crime drama set in 2048

The viaduct and BC Place as Anyplace USA, circa 2048 in TV’s new show, Almost Human.

VANCOUVER -- If the futuristic television show Almost Human is anything to go by, TransLink will be getting a massive infrastructure budget for new rapid transit links over the next 35 years.

The new cop series being filmed in Vancouver is set in an unnamed U.S. city in 2048, but uses exterior shots of present-day Vancouver — enhanced with computer-generated imagery — as the basis for its ultramodern metropolis of the future.

And new transit lines are everywhere.

The Lions Gate Bridge has a bullet train running along its deck, the Georgia Viaduct has monorail lines on both sides of the roadway, and Vancouver streets are generally brimming with new above-grade rapid transit connections.

Series creator J.H. Wyman envisions a future with many more mass transit options — but no flying cars, such as those used by characters in The Jetsons cartoon series in the year 2062.

“I didn’t want to have everyone in flying cars because, for me, people are bad enough drivers on the road, let alone in the air,” he said in an interview. “I just think that public transportation — as a pure convenience to cut through the city — will become a much larger thing.”

Wyman, who worked in Vancouver for four years on the series Fringe, said the city’s modern architecture makes it a great choice for a futuristic setting.

“Fringe was set in Boston and New York, so I had to hide a great deal because sometimes the buildings (in Vancouver) were too modern or too glassy,” he said. “I always regretted that because the city is so beautiful and the architecture is so inspired. It’s like this is the future right here.”

While transit buffs will be thrilled with the show’s transit-friendly vision of the future, protectionists will be horrified by the development run amok in some of Vancouver’s most exclusive neighbourhoods.

Point Grey has been transformed into a sea of highrise towers, and West Vancouver doesn’t have any mountains, just skyscrapers as far as the eye can see.

“The mountains are a little bit problematic because the city is supposed to be massive, so we added a lot of buildings and other things in post-effects,” Wyman said.

But the series has given a big thumbs-up to BC Place and its skyward-pointing steel beams, as the renovated stadium has already appeared several times in just four episodes that have aired so far.

Visual-effects experts have even created a new version of the stadium by adding another layer to it and capping it with a domed roof.

“BC Place has been around a long time, but people were very forward-looking when they designed that, not unlike the Olympic Stadium and Olympic Village in Montreal, which are very futuristic looking,” Wyman said.

A lot of not-so-futuristic-looking Vancouver buildings are clearly visible in the series — including St. Paul’s Hospital, The Electra condo tower, and Waterfront Station.

Marijuana enthusiasts will be pleased to see the New Amsterdam Café still selling pot paraphernalia on Hastings Street.

The future of Vancouver’s bike lanes seems uncertain, though, as the lanes on the Georgia Viaduct appear to have made way for monorail trains.

Many critics and viewers have mistakenly assumed that Almost Human is intended to look as if is were set in Los Angeles, perhaps because some of the night shots remind them of Blade Runner, a 1982 film set in 2019 Los Angeles.

But Wyman insists his series has no definitive location, although it is likely a West Coast city.

Syracuse University professor and noted pop culture expert Robert Thompson feels that, visually, it is a good thing the show is shot in Vancouver and not Los Angeles. He said one of the greatest appeals for shooting any series in Vancouver is that it doesn’t look like the sprawling Southern California metropolis.

“Visually, Los Angeles has become the biggest cliché in the history of the planet,” he said in an interview. “I remember having a very weird sense of déjà vu the first time I visited there because it quickly occurred to me that I’d already seen almost every single place I looked. I’d seen it in a movie or a cop show or whatever. That place has been worn out and shot to within an inch of its life.”

Thompson said television generally does a good job of projecting our current vision of what the future will look like.

“When I was a kid, the future meant we’d have a lot of flying cars, freeways stacked about six levels high, and space packs that we could fly around in,” he said. “That was a very ’60s and ’70s vision of the future.”

Thompson feels Wyman’s vision of ubiquitous rapid transit connections is a perfect 2013 concept of the future because of concerns about global warming and our dependence on fossil fuels.

“So what’s the future — either complete and total chaos or some kind of monorail system?” he said. “They’ve chosen the monorail system. That’s optimistic, and we’ll see if that actually happens.”

Wyman agrees he has put forth a “hopeful future” in the new series.

“We’re going to learn a lot of lessons as a human race, but I’m hoping we’re going to get the picture eventually,” he said.

Wyman said keen futurists will notice certain unique elements he has added to the show, including a red ball that hovers in the air in certain frames.

“The people of this era know what they are, but we don’t, although eventually we’ll find out,” he said. “You have to really scour for them, but they’re there.”

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